Since signing a collaboration agreement with the Okinawa Prefectural Police Headquarters in February of last year, the Toyota Mobility Foundation (TMF) has been working with Toyota Rent-A-Lease Okinawa, Yazaki Corporation, JTB Corporation, Toyota Motor Corporation, the University of the Ryukyus, and the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Engineering on industry-government-academia initiatives. Together, they have been analyzing police accident data, vehicle data (passenger and commercial vehicles), and data from rental car onboard apps.
Currently, they are pooling their respective data to promote various measures such as identifying hazardous locations, elucidating accident causes, devising countermeasures, and verifying the effectiveness of these measures. The aim is to develop methods that lead to accident prevention. Additionally, efforts to reduce accidents involving rental cars and to promote tourism and alleviate congestion through onboard apps continue to yield positive results.
The main achievements are as follows. Moving forward, this initiative will be named the “Okinawa Yui Maru Project,” embodying the spirit of collaboration and mutual assistance in the Okinawan language, aiming to further address regional challenges such as reducing traffic accidents and promoting tourism.
- Progress in infrastructure measures Through multifaceted analysis combining police accident data and vehicle data (Yazaki Corporation and Toyota Motor Corporation), efforts to identify hazardous locations and reflect them in road measures in collaboration with various administrative agencies have progressed.
- Implementation of road measures utilizing sudden braking information highly correlated with traffic accidents, in cooperation with Ginowan City, Nishihara Town, and Naha Port Management Association.
- Implementation of measures in Nago City targeting locations where speeding is accompanied by the use of shortcuts as school route measures.
- Estimation of risk factors for left turn free lanes, a road shape associated with many accidents in Okinawa, by combining accident data and vehicle data.
- Changes in driving behavior through dedicated tablets Vehicles equipped with dedicated tablets (manufactured by Yazaki Corporation) showed a reduction in accidents throughout the demonstration period, with a 55% decrease in accidents among foreigners and a 38% decrease among Japanese. Furthermore, analysis of vehicle data showed improvements in both sudden acceleration and sudden braking, corroborating the decrease in accident numbers.
Source: TOYOTA mobility Foundation
https://toyotamobilityfoundation.jp/news/release/0110.html
